Consider this to be a quick temperature reading. Employers and recruiters in pharma, health care and biotech performed fewer searches in October, mostly thanks to declines in two key states - New Jersey and Massachusetts, which dropped by 5.6 and 3.2 percent, respectively, according to stats from MedZilla.com.

However, gains were made in Illinois (1.9 percent), California (1.3 percent), and Missouri (0.9 percent). As for openings clients were trying to fill, sales and management jobs remained at the top, claiming more than 30 percent of resume searches, although changes were modest - sales searches rose by 2.2 percent, management was off by almost one percent. From September to October, the biggest gain in resume searching was in the lab technician arena, rising 3.2 percent. General medical and surgical searches also went up by 2.6 percent.

Job postings remained relatively flat over the past month, with only New Jersey seeing an increase in postings of more than half a percent. Of the top jobs posted, the biggest changes were in research (a loss of two percent) and gains of 1.8 to 2.3 percent in business development, primary care, and marketing. Applicants, meanwhile, continued at the previous month’s rate of job searching, with only California seeing a change of more than one percent in either direction.

As of last month, 41.4 percent of applicants were looking for sales positions while only 21.9 percent of employers were searching for new sales representatives. The jobs most often searched for once again were dominated by sales positions - all of the top ten searches by state and job title were for some sort of sales rep opening. (These are selected excerpts. You can read the complete press release here).

Over the past six months, sales remained the most popular field for both clients and applicants, medical/surgical, lab tech, and research jobs have seen small but consistent increases on the part of the job posters. Also, while 0.7 more people searched for sales jobs by keyword, 2.2 percent more employers searched for those positions, indicating that jobs may be coming available even as the holiday season - which can be a tough time for sales reps trying to pin down medical personnel and make their presentations - ramps up.

Massachusetts seemed to be ground zero for layoffs over the past month. Sepracor is letting go about 300 sales reps. Boston Scientific is restructuring or combining several operational areas, leading to job cuts of about 2,300. Inverness planned to scale back by 49 and move 47 positions to a new location in Orlando, Fla. Also, a 0.7 percent increase in job searches in Pennsylvania could be linked to Bayer’s announcement that they would be eliminating up to 200 jobs over the next 18 months.